This does have the sort of appearance of a crescendo, the lady singing at the end of the opera. She may not be completely done singing yet, as a solid sell signal has not been triggered, and I am not sure how much longer she is going to keep singing, but for the more conservative natured, taking at least some profits off the table may not be a bad idea. -- Just thinking out loud, not to be considered as trading advice.
Finally got a sell signal at around 1924/1925. I hate to sound like a broken record, but it is obviously not possible to get in at exact bottoms or out at exact tops, let alone a signal can be totally wrong. Again this is supposed to be a real time record of my signals, like a journal, not to be considered as trading advice. Happy trading.
Got a buy signal this afternoon. I've noticed that buy signals often appear when there is strong buying force within a trading period, but can be earlier than the actual turning point. Therefore I am thinking maybe I should keep the puts now and wait until the next buy signal to confirm the uptrend. What if this is the only buy signal and the market takes off from here? I guess so be it, I have longer term core holdings in stocks and ETFs anyway, and the puts can be considered as hedging in case the market does take a dive in the near future.
Haven't updated this thread for a while. Got a couple more buy signals shortly after the last buy signal at essentially the same level. As the market touched the same level again today, I found myself still wondering whether to start accumulating calls or wait for more confirmation. This is why I can't be a day trader. Regarding a question on inverse ETFs or leveraged ETFs, I do not trade these because they are complicated by volatility loss, also called compounding error, I believe. Unlike time decay of options, which can be calculated and predicted mathematically, volatility loss leads to unpredictable payoffs. Inverse and leveraged ETFs can deliver superior or inferior returns, based on different market conditions. Therefore even unleveraged inverse ETFs are not delta one products in a strict sense. They are ok for day trading, since the compounding error does not happen on intraday basis. Also to someone really good at technical analysis and timing the market, these ETFs may work as fine trading vehicles. Otherwise, be cautious. The definition and cause of volatility loss/compounding error can be found by searching on the web.
This is the updated chart as of yesterday afternoon. Typically it is not a good idea to override a proven working trading system. But in this case I am happy that I used discretion against those recent buy signals. I had doubts because they were just about 20 to 30 points off the all time high of S&P, and based on the size of the previous blue spike, it was hard for me to believe that was all the pullback there was. But obviously that was assuming the sell signal was valid, which I was not sure at that timeï¼ hence all the hesitation and dilemma. Anyway if I had to make an excuse for deviating from system-generated signals, I guess I could say I used a filter rather than just gut feeling. On a side note, the ETFs I commented on in previous post referred to stock index ETFs. For ETFs involving commodity or VIX futures, additional mathematical rules may be at play. On a final note, I sort of let this thread die during the summer. In addition to the good weather, another reason is that I noticed the ETFs included in the baskets of stocks from which these signals were generated may be causing noises, especially when market is making big moves. Therefore I am trying to tease out the ETF-related noises, and see if that will give me better signals. This will take some time. My system is a work-in-progress, and probably will always be, as any trading systems. Therefore I will focus on work and stop posting for a while. Maybe I will resurface in a few months. Ciao for now.